


Rotations

by conceptofzero



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: F/F, F/M, a whole bunch of ocs - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 03:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16884693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/pseuds/conceptofzero
Summary: The castle in the sky floats there, evermore, evermore, eternal and perfect and unattainable.The swords fill her body one by one and Anthy suffers, as she always has. The pain is familiar. The pain is boring.Akio hacks at the door with another useless sword and as she sighs, the air comes whooshing out a thousand punctures in her body.The castle remains. Anthy remains. The new school year starts.





	Rotations

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be a commission, but I was never able to write this to my satisfaction, so it's become a gift for a friend instead. The original prompt was a request to explore what one or some of the previous cons might have looked like.

The castle in the sky floats there, evermore, evermore, eternal and perfect and unattainable. 

The swords fill her body one by one and Anthy suffers, as she always has. The pain is familiar. The pain is boring. 

Akio hacks at the door with another useless sword and as she sighs, the air comes whooshing out a thousand punctures in her body. 

The castle remains. Anthy remains. The new school year starts. 

\--

Anthy is the most beautiful woman Arata’s ever seen. She is beautiful, so beautiful, that when her eyes rest on Arata, he can only ever look away, his face burning up. He can never work up the courage to speak to her, so he lingers by her rose garden, watching her when she isn’t looking at him.

She’s beautiful. He likes to imagine he’s married to her. A boy shouldn’t do that, shouldn’t be like that, but he imagines anyway. He holds those dreams close to his chest, folded tightly and tucked in the deepest pocket of his jacket, where his friends will never find them. If they knew, they would mock him for it. A man should only care about fucking. He should only care about saying what it takes to get his hand inside her dress. But Arata doesn’t want that. None of his dreams involve sex.

When he thinks of Anthy, he thinks about her dressed in red - beautiful, beautiful red - sitting on a couch in their shared home. He wouldn’t ask her to do anything. A maid would do all the ugly work, all the chores and the dirty things. Anthy could just read and care for her roses and be beautiful - untouched and flawless and perfect. And maybe, just maybe… maybe Arata could return home at night and lie his head in her perfect lap. Her fingers are so long. They would slide through his hair and tousle it, and they wouldn’t need to speak. She would understand him without clumsy words.

There is a letter in his locket. There is a ring. It’s white and pink, a rose carved in the bezel. He knows what this is. The boys who stand with Anthy always wear them on their hands. She follows silently in their wakes, head down, demure and silent. Those loud, awful boys who joke and laugh, who touch Anthy carelessly.

They remind Arata of his stepfather’s muddy boots sitting on the coffee table, ugly smears that his mother would wash off over and over again. Her hands are always ugly - red and chapped. Arata can’t stand them touching her. He can’t stand those muddy bootprints. He can’t stand those boys and their swaggers and the knowing smirks they give one another when they pass in the halls, Anthy two steps behind.

Anthy won’t walk behind Arata. Anthy won’t be a trophy to parade about. She will be kept safe and secure, kept happy in a good house. Arata will come home each night to his wife, to his home, to her beautiful smile and her soft, clean hands that smell like roses.

The ring slides firmly on his finger. He is afraid, but for her - for Anthy - he will do anything. Arata will fight for a future where she is treated as she ought to be - as a treasure.

\--

“How can you do that?”

The voice is familiar. Gorou glances to his right. A girl stands there. She’s squared her shoulders, ready for a fight - or so she thinks. Gorou can see how she holds herself and knows that if he hit her, she would crumple into tears. She’s small enough that she’s gotten away her whole life just yelling at people, knowing they’ll never do anything except bear her words.

He could hit her. But for the moment, he leans against the wall, eyeing her up and down. What class do they share? It doesn’t matter.

“Because I want to.” Gorou answers, not knowing what it is she’s offended by. It doesn’t really matter. He does what he wants, because he wants to. It’s the way of things.

Her face tightens - a shame, she’d be pretty if she just smiled - and her hands clutch at her skirt. She seems like she wants to fly into a rage, but she calms herself, turning it into a simmer instead of letting her pot boil over. “Is that what you think being a man means? Doing what you want?”

“That’s rather philosophical for someone so small.” He finds himself doubting that they share classes. She sound so naive. The girl must be a junior, fresh off of learning half-truths about the world. “What is a man then? Since you’re the expert and all, you could give me some tips.”

“A man is selfless, not selfish. A man is considerate, not careless. A man is kind to everyone, not just people he wants something from. A man is not ever cruel.” She snaps off a list of them, one clearly memorized. Gorou grins to himself, amused by this slip of a girl. He can see the fires burning in her. The world is unjust, and she’s here to make him see his wrongs.

If he hit her square on the nose, all those clever words would fall from her brain and leave her an ugly mess.

“That’s a wonderful thought.” He says, his tone consoling, as if to assure her that she’s done well. He doesn’t even need to add condescension. She is burning with a desire to prove him wrong. “You should write that down and put it in the school paper.”

“If you think it’s wonderful, then you should practice it!” Her hair falls over her shoulders. He wants to touch it. She would be so offended. Those eyes would get so narrow- “You should treat Anthy better!”

Anthy? Gorou blinks, and he’s surprised to hear that coming from her mouth. She’s too young for their classes, too young to know Anthy and yet she stands here as if she has some stake in this.

He takes a closer look at her face. She’s got sharp features, too sharp to really be cute now that he’s looking at her. He was wrong. Even smiling, she wouldn’t be pretty. She’s a shrew. A little brown-haired shrew with a pointy nose and chin. Gorou pushes his hair out of his face as he leans down, closing the gap between them.

“Anthy is treated exactly as she wishes to be treated.” He doesn’t let her interrupt, clearly burning to deliver some dull attempt at a lecture. “Go on, ask her. She’ll tell you how happy she is.”

“Like she could tell me any differently! Like you would let her…” He loves the bitter tone in her voice. Shame she has to be like this. A girl like her could be fun. It wouldn’t take long before she changed her tune and sang like a little bird.

“How can I stop her when I’m not around?” Gorou sets a hand on her shoulder and she slaps it away. He smiles when she confirms that she can’t hit him hardly hard enough to matter. “Are you jealous?”

“You’re disgusting.” Shrew spits it out like the words are covered in barbs. She’s the kind of virtuous who needs to loudly announce it to an audience, because being a good person only matters if everyone can see you.

One day, she’ll learn the truth of things.

“I’m a man. And one day, when you’re a woman instead of a girl, you’ll understand. This is an affair between adults.”

The little mouse clenches her hands into fists. For a moment, he thinks she will strike at him. He’ll let her hit him, once. Just once. On the second strike, he’ll put his hand around her throat and slam her against the wall and squeeze. He’ll be justified then. It was self defense-

“You’re disgusting.” She says again, her eyes bright with rage - and the mist of tears. “One day, you’ll see how terrible you’ve been to someone whose only crime was loving you.”

“And one day, you’ll get plastic surgery and look less like a rat.” Gorou taps the tip of her sharp little nose, smiling at her. “When you do-”

She bites him. The little shrew bites him. Her teeth sink into his finger and he’s left shocked and then horrified at the sight of his finger caught between her sharp teeth. Gorou yanks his hand back, ignoring the pain as he tears his hand away.

“Touch me again, and I’ll kill you.” There’s blood on her teeth. Gorou clutches his hand close. She turns on her heel and stalks off.

Too late does he remember that he was going to hit her when he got the chance. But it’s gone, it’s passed, and he’s left with his finger dripping blood on his uniform.

\--

Those boys and girls, so young, so full of angst and anger, brimming with dreams and hopes that haven’t yet felt the heel of the world press down on them. Like ticks, feeding from the carcass of something too hard for them to comprehend and understand.

She sits bare on the floor of the observatory while Akio dresses and she imagines them on her skin. She pictures their hungry forms, their desperate faces, their little teeth pressed into her skin. She imagines them clinging to her thighs, draining her of blood. Their teeth are sharp, like little swords.

“Send the letters.” Akio tells her. Her glasses sit on the coffee table, folded and waited. He draws his hair back and ties it up. Ako doesn’t look at her, his eyes focused upward to the ceiling above them and the infinite field of stars. 

Anthy pictures the boys and girls clearly, their little bodies bloated and red, and presses her thumb over the spots where they would. She feels them pop underneath her thumbs. 

\--

Akio, handsome, flawless Akio, offers her a champagne glass and says in a perfectly practiced tone, “Don’t you feel silly with a woman on your arm?”

Nao just laughs. She’s been working on it for years. It’s light and airy, gentle and pleasing in the best way. Her eyes glitter with amusement. Every inch of her body leans in, as if his very presence has her rapt and hanging on every word.

She is her father’s daughter and like him, she will see Akio and Anthy crushed beneath her heel when this is done.

“Oh not at all.” Nao reassures Akio, her arm still locked with Anthy’s. “It’s quite comfortable. Mother always brought a companion with her everywhere she went. When she was younger, it was her sister. And once I was old enough, it was me. Father would be off and mother and I would just lock arms and spend the night chatting about everything and anything.”

Anthy is the perfect trophy. She dresses beautiful and has a graceful smile, just like Nao. Her conversational skills are wonderful, just the right balance of submissiveness and barbed jabs aimed at others. She wonders if Anthy and Akio used one another to practice, facing each other and going through the motions again and again until they looked just right. Nao always had to make do with a mirror. She could only correct what she saw in herself.

The champagne waits. Nao takes the glass to sip from it. Her other arm stays locked in Anthy’s. 

Akio tips his head in a polished way that Nao almost envys. If she were to turn her head that way, she would look shrewish and snide. But Akio looks the right mix of sly and playful. The only expression a woman can wear well is a placid smile. “And what is it that women speak about when they huddle together? Fashion? Make-up?” 

Nao turns her glass between her fingers. Mother would whisper to Nao and teach her how to read a room. She would share dark little secrets she had caught in conversations. The minster’s wife is having an affair with their accountant. The CEO’s son is really his nephew, paid for at birth from his poorer sister. The chairman brings prostitutes into his marital bed. Nao would remember each one and carefully stow it in her memory. 

“Both of those, and men, of course. We always spoke about the men.” She casts a look at Anthy who looks demurely back. There are dark, deep waters there and Nao will one day cast her net in them and fish all those dark secrets out of her. One day, she and Nao will be arm in arm at a function like this, beautiful and untouchable, and they will whisper to one another while Akio thinks himself king of the room, and they will laugh at him, the way she and mother laughed at father. 

Akio chuckles and cups her face, and Nao thinks of how good they will look in her home, dressed in the clothes she chooses. They’re playing a child’s game but some day soon, they will graduate and they will forget this childish fantasy of a castle in the sky, and they will understand that Nao offers them a shining tower to rule from instead. 

\--

She shines the silverware. It polishes to gleaming. The smell of cleaner fills the room until it burns at her lungs.

When Rei returns to the room, he chides her. "You’ve forgotten to open a window.” 

“Ah, sorry. I was distracted.” The knives are all laid out on the table, on the white cloth that came with the cleaning set. Rei sees this and he clicks his tongue. 

“Nobody uses those. You shouldn’t waste your time cleaning them.” He says. He doesn’t stop her, and so she goes on polishing them, wiping away the dark marks. Rei opens the window and sits by it, the scene of the polish drifting past him. A breeze fills the room and Chu-Chu emerges from her pencil box, wheezing madly as his little lungs desperately draw in fresh air. 

His laboured breathing is the only sound, for a bit. Just a big, though. 

“They’re just going to get tarnished again.” Rei criticizes her, which is his favorite pastime. Though to be fair, it isn’t just her that he criticizes. He hates everyone for failing to meet his standards. 

Anthy knows exactly what that feels like. 

“Sorry.” Her face reflects back at her in a spoon, distorted. She smiles, and the spoon smiles back, curved and messy. 

\--

The envelope is waiting when Ken returns from kendo practice. It rests on his pillow. There is another note on Anthy’s - an apology, her brother feels poorly and she’s gone to keep him company, dinner is waiting in the icebox.

Ken takes the sealed envelope and goes to the fridge. Dinner is curry. He decides not to try his luck. Instead, he takes a can of coffee and sits at his desk, slitting the envelope and pulling the letter out.

It’s the invitation the others have been expecting. Ken looks at the tight neat printing and he sips his coffee. The others will be excited and anxious. They’ll speculate. Perhaps some of them will try fight him. They have all fought him twice. They have all fallen to his sword.

There is no one who is better than Ken. This is not bravado. This is simply the truth. He is a man who exists only once every few centuries - a man who wields his sword as if he were born with the grip in his hand. Sometimes, he feels the sword within him, sharp and strong. It bites at him. It rattles.

Anthy alone draws it from his chest. Anthy alone lets him sate the furious thirst it feels.

And yet, Anthy is gone, again. She is gone often these days. When they duel, she is there by his side, but he sometimes feels like she is not really there. It reminds him of his mother. She always smiled, but it never reached her eyes. No matter how much she tried, he could always see her sorrow in them.

Anthy closes her eyes whenever she smiles.

Ken sips his coffee. It’s cold and bitter. He knows what he should do. Accept the invitation. Climb to the dueling arena. Face the man who has sent the others after him again and again. Win. Bring revolution.

He knows what he should do. Ken has always known it. He learned from his mother, who always did as she should - not as she pleased, not as she wanted.

The sun throws dark, tall shadows against the wall. When the can is finished, he makes up his mind. It’s easy. Anthy is gone. Chu-Chu sleeps through it all, snoring in a tea cup left on the table. All of Ken’s things fit into a single bag. His shinai slings over his back. The room is quiet as he leaves, and no one seems to notice him as he goes. They’re busy with their own thoughts and dreams, their own wants.

The saber in his chest rattles. Ken supposes it will never stop. But he knows one thing - whatever lies at the end of this will not make him happy. Happiness must lie somewhere else.

He steps beyond the school grounds and makes his way into the world, and for a moment, he finds the sharpness in him to be more like a friend than a foe.

\--

They all die, of course. 

Arata grasps at the hem of her dress as he dies, burying his face in it. He weeps at the sound of steel swords tearing through flesh, crying as Anthy is ruined again and again. She was perfect in his eyes, and she is perfect no more. He dies and his sword bends against the door. 

Gorou doesn’t see the blade until it’s too late, and then he fights back in clumsy, oafish ways. He dies with his face dangling off the platform, facing away from the castle. His sword snaps on the very first swing, strong but brittle, and the hilt is discarded while Anthy writhes above. 

Nao fights back, tooth and nail. She battles them both. Her blade cuts Anthy deep and leaves her kneeling on the floor, her insides spilling in her hands. Her sword drips with Anthy and Akio’s blood, and finally with Nao’s blood as well. She holds up longest, but in the end, her sword breaks.

In the end, all the swords break. In the end, all rings are returned, even if they must be pried off of cold, dead fingers. 

Even those who escape will die. Ken slips away but the sword in him will cut him to his dying day, and even as he lies in bed, surrounded by family and friends, he will know deep down that he gave up on a world that could have been. Perhaps, not for him, but for others more deserving - for the World’s prince. 

In the end, they all die. Except for Anthy and Akio. 

When Death smiles at them, all teeth and no skin, Anthy and Akio small back, their lips pressed tight together, not a sliver of bone anywhere to be seen. Death passes them by, and they begin again, starting from the top. 

\--

The castle in the sky floats there, evermore, evermore, eternal and perfect and unattainable.

The swords fill her body one by one and Anthy suffers, as she always has. Akio’s sword breaks, again. 

Pathetic. 

She waits for a new school year.


End file.
